Saturday, November 14, 2009

Yesterday we started our November board meeting in the new location in San Francisco. Michael had posted the agenda of the meeting on foundation-l. After the meeting he would surely post a summary of the meeting and Kat would post the meeting minutes a little later.

For me the meeting in San Francisco is also a very welcome opportunity to meet the staff.

One thing about our staff is that they are so often criticized, in most cases unjustified, and often very personal and in a hurting manner. And they are so few thanked, although there are so many reasons to say thank you to them.

For example thank you that you are keeping the project sites running, thank you that you are improving our software, thank you that you are fending off every threat against us, thank you that you are keeping the public informed about us, thank you that you are coordinating our volunteers works like OTRS and translation, thank you that you are organizing Wikipedia Academy to invite and encourage more people join our movement, thank you that you get all the money so that we can do all these wonderful things.

Thank you that you are even working off works and if necessary even at the weekend or during vacation.

If we consider our movement as an organism, for me our staff is the heart, the very heart that keeps the organism nourished so that it can grow, move and change the world.

It is a tiny heart, only 30 people, for a HUGE organism, with hundreds of thousands of editors and even more users. It is a very strong heart, because even despite of this disproportion it is keeping our movement going, and even improving itself during all this time.

Everyone know how important our heart is. But in the most time we don't think about it. Mostly we only think about it if we feel it begins to fail to meet our demand. So be thankful that we have this strong heart. And keep in mind it is OUR heart, it is a very vital part of US.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

After the closing ceremony, the Wikimania party started at 10:00 pm. This was my favorite party until now: No shows, no announcements, no presentations, simply party, dancing, laughing, chatting. I enjoyed it a lot. I think to put the party on the last day of the conference is really a very good idea.

The next day I had finally time to do some sight seeing in the city. Because I must leave at 6:00 pm for airport, I decided to make a bus tour with three other Wikimedians. I am really happy that we did this, because otherwise I would only have the picture of a street valley in my memory about this beautiful city. The old wharf scatter La Boca, which is now a day a hip. But behind the main street facade or on the less visited street you can still see the remains of the scatter. The Ecological Reserve that is build upon landfill wasts. While in the downtown city it seems only sparrow and pigeon had servived here are plenty of wild birds, most easily to see are the parrots. The port area is a modern area with skyscrapers, but also broad streets where people jogging, inline-scating and bycicling. The northern part of the city has some big parks, squares and are pretty green.

We made two stops, and at the end of the tour I have also had to pick up my luggage for airport.

Friday, August 28, 2009

I spent a lot of time to talk with other people. For example with Heiko Hees who is one of the developers for the "Create a book" feature that is implemented on the english Wikibooks. They had made an educational video for this feature which is actually in German and are searching for someone native english speaker who can read the text for the english version.

I had also talked quite long with Jerry, the president of Wikimedia Hongkong, about the community there, the work of Wikimedia Hongkong, the planned Wikimedia Macao and the possibility of creating a Wikimedia China, about the preparation of the chinese Wikipedia conference end december.

At lunch time there was a very long talk with the strategic planning team about all kind of things arround the strategic planning. I am really happy that we have this strong team who had worked out the process so good (although they themselves always say it is not perfect). Half a year back on our January board meeting when we first talked about initiating such a process I found it difficult to imaging how we can really get the community and the chapters involved. And now it is there, the impossible that becomes reality.

The keynote of Sue is a hymn for the community. It was really charming.

The Board Q&A session was in my opinion too short. I am sure there are more people who want to ask questions and didn't got the chance.

The closing ceremeny is moving. The Buenos Aires team had made miracles. It is really great.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

The keynote by Jimmy Wales today morning was simply great. The best call for participation for the strategic planning process I had ever anticipated.

I missed the panel led by Andrew Lih because I had at the same time a talk by myself.

The sessions after the lunch break got really really good.

I visited the talks from Chitu Okoli and Mako about researches on Wikipedia. We need such researches, I am surprised that there are indeed some of them out there. Their results are very fascinating and helpful.

After that two tech talks about usability from Naoko and Angela. Really great. There was after the talk a very lively discussion about all aspects of usability. The developers made life sneak previews about features they are working on. There are inputs from other projects that use MediaWiki, comparisons with different solutions. What I found really good is the improvement on talk pages that should be released soon on the trial version. Really cool. A very very huge thank you very much to all developers that are involved and the whole usability team.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

It is always the same by Wikimania: You have four tracks running paralell and you would at least devide yourself into three so that you won't miss anything really interesting.

The opening keynote by Richard Stallman was very entertaining. That show with how he entered the stage, how he auctioned the gnu was really funny. The first part of his keynote was about free software and was quite identical with the talk he made five year ago in Frankfurt. In the second part he took the chance to express his opinion about some of the articles on Wikipedia. I don't think that he is right, but I am ok in he distribute this, after all we invited him.

I had heard three very interesting talks today and I surely missed two or three equally interesting talks because of conflict of time. Two of the talks was technical talks, one made by Rob Halsell about the infrastructure of the Wikimedia servers, the other was given by Daniel Kinzler about the Toolserver. Both were very good visited and both were very interesting, with a lot of details that I didn't know earlier. I can scarcely wait them put the presentation on the TechBlog.

The third talk was given by two teachers from the Old Dominion University. They started three years ago a project by teaching the students in let the students to write their textbooks on WikiBooks. It is a really fascinating project. The two presenters are both teachers at the Darden College of Education. They teach people who would become teachers. They said when they ask their students if they would use this methode for their students, most of the students said yes. I think this is really one of the best measure for success.

At first I want to appology that in contrary to my normal custom I didn't write my blog in three languages at the moment. As usual Wikimania and Board Meeting are tough and a lot of things are happening so that the time is sorrowfully limited to work on the computer. I hope that later I can add the translations.

Day two was fully for board meeting. Today the topic is strategic planning process. The team introduced procedures, measurements of success and plans. There were a lot of discussions. Because of the scheduled press conference we must break up at 15:00, so the session was really too short. There are a lot of ideas that were discussed but the discussion must be break off at some point simply because of the schedule. In total the workshop was very concentrated. I asked Arne later how was his impression of the board meeting and it was very positive.

The venue of this year's conference is in the middle of down town, in one of the most crowded place. It is at the basement and the lower floors of an office tower, quite different to the venues we had in the last years. The tech folks who are attending Hacking Days are already productive.

As every Wikimania it is a meeting between friends that one had only had online-contact for a year. A lot of hugs, hand shakings, greetings, how are yous, a lot of discussions about the past year and the year before us. Talking about ideas, projects, works, experiences.

For example I met Achal Prabhala at dinner. Achal was the one who had moderated my first Wikimania talk back in Frankfurt. We talked about the forming indian chapter and about all the difficulties, about culture and language, about the differences between the different language versions. That was really a nice evening.

So, I am now really looking forward of the coming days. It would be good, as every year.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

I arrived Buenos Aires at 19:00 local time at Saturnday evening. While the plane is landing, the city is already emerged into darkness. From the air the city doesn't look so bright as many other cities, especially the outskirt are quite dark.

Yesterday morning I had the chance to go arround a little near the hotel and take a first impression of the city. The buildings here in the downtown are all very tall, mostly over ten floors. They are either in a style of neo-classic or are totally undecorated and looks like buildings out of the 1950s or 1960s in Germany, but far more taller. Most of the streets are very narrow. At least in the part of the city where I was there are very very few modern architects. No business towers with steel and glass. There are one or two that are really broad.

I made the classic failure of a northerner and went in the direction of sun in the assumption that this is south. Naturally, in the southern hemisphere this is north.

We had our first board meeting day today. New board members are introduced. New members also mean new ideas and frish wind. Lively discussions about diverse topics, mostly organizational (protocal would be published on the Foundation-wiki, so I don't want to be too detailed here).

In the evening we went for dinner, and met other Wikimedians in the Restaurante. A lot of handshakes and discussions and hugs.

I am disappointed that from the downtown the city light is so strong that one cannot see any stars, one can only see the moon and one or two of the most bright stars.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Because of job it took me a few days to write down my thoughts about the election and its result. A few days that are needed to sort my thoughts.

At first I want to thank all the voters and volunteers and other participants who had took part in the election process. I want to thank those who had put their trust in me, as in the last year I would work hard to prove myself trustworthy. To be a community elected trustee is a tremendous honor for me.

The number of participants are almost at the same level as last year. This is far more lower than the license update vote. For me this indicates that the majority of our editor community is not very interested in what the board in special and the Foundation in wide sense is doing. The nice interpretation of this is that the board and the Foundation is just doing that what the community expects it doing, nothing spectacular and nothing utterly wrong. The WMF is traditionally a very quiet organization. Despite its power it doesn't make a lot of public recommendations or comments. Actually I am comfortable with this, because the Foundation and the board is not the star or the center of our community. The Foundation and the board is supporting the community. On the other side, the Foundation is also doing more than just support the community. It is making meaningful things with the knowledge that is accumulated by the community. This is expressed in our mission. An encyclopedia or a text book or a research project are only meaningful if they are indeed used. The Foundation had put it on its agenda to promote this. And the Foundation and the board are the place where it would be decided on how and where to promote. This is the reason why I hope we will have a broader participation of the community by the strategic planning.

I am sad that Domas dropped out of the board, on the other side I am also very happy that Samuel joined us now. The first time I met both of them on Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt. I joined a presentation made by Domas and Tim about MediaWiki programming there and Samuel recorded a session about four different wikipedia language versions on which I presented the chinese Wikipedia. Both of them are very witful and resourceful. I am really happy in looking forward to work with Samual. And I know that Domas is simple not to be overlooked, in or outside of the board.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

The voting for the Board of Trustees of the WikiMedia Foundation Inc. had started. The Board is the highest control and steering organ of the Foundation. In this year, three seats would be reelected for a two years term. Questions to the candidates can be submitted here. I submitted for re-election this year.

I would also advocate for voting for Domas. Domas is an active member out of the developer and system admin community. Though the Foundation has tech staff now a very big part of the development of our software is done by this small, quiet but vitally important community. So in my opinion a member out of this community on the Board is important.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Are images like this in scope of the board resolution about BPL or are they not? Can a image take along without context be considered as violating dignity of living person? If yes can they be kept on one of the Wikimedia projects in accordance with the board resolution?

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The result of the Licensing Update Poll is now published. I am very happy about this result. This is more than three fourth of the attendents agree with the license change. Given the lots of critical debates and remarks in the prior discussion the number of positive votes surprised me. It is surely very good work done especially by Eric Möller and Mike Godwin to communicate with the community and to take as much points of critical remarks as possible and integrate them in the new license change document.

Monday, May 18, 2009

At friday morning I got a mail from the IBM Corporate Service Corps that I was selected as one of the corp members. Two months ago there was a call for partifipation. I was immediately electrified as I read the mail. It was the chance I was waiting for. I called my boss to ask him for the allowance to applicate on the program. He said yes he would support me for that. I wrote the application down in the same evening. I didn't thought a lot as I wrote the application. It was as if the program is maid for me. The reasons why I want to take part on it were all so natural that I don't need to really think about them. The only challenge was to confine my thoughts in 5000 letters. And now, it is there. I am still electrified thinking of it. Mr. Kusterer, who is responsible for Corporate Citizenship in IBM in Germany told us on the CSC Roadshow that the chance to get selected is like an application by the Stanford University. So, it's an honor, a responsibility, and an adventure into an unknown universe.

The featured article on the Chinese Wikipedia this week is 胡风反革命集团案, which means "Hu Feng conterrevolutionary Clique". It is an episode shortly after the begin of the People's Republic of China and is the first of all big political campagne, which would one day summit in the Culture Revolution. This is after a long time I again start a translation from the Chinese Wikipedia out into the German Wikipedia. The last one is about Pagoda, also a featured article in zh-wp.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Ok, now it is official. Gdansk won the bidding for Wikimania 2010. This was a really hard work to go through all the biddings. I never imagined it would be so hard. But at the end I am happy that we have so many good bids.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

I just read the following text out of the March 1931 issue of Scientific American:

We are faced with a stagnation of industry such as we thought would never occur again. The country is full of remedies, but in trying to think our way through the difficulty we must remember that we are living in a 20th-century industrial world and not an 18th-century one. Our new world is a world of interdependence and solidarity. It is a world with thousands of criss-crossing threads. It is a world in which the relations between cause and effect have been so lengthened that on any given day the Egyptian planter cannot know what his cotton or sugar is worth until he receives the quotation from Galveston or Cuba. A heavy frost in the Mississipi valley will affect prices on the Liverpool exchange, and the disturbance will reverberate in Australia and India. French savings, through the channel of a loan to Argentina or Chile, contribute to the development of Belgian or German industry. Prosperity in Czechoslovakia by increasing the consumption of chocolate, results in the stimulation of the plantations of Venezuela. ...

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Today I got the neuest issue of my subscription of Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the german sister scientific magazine of Scientific American. While I turned the pages over one of a whole page announcement caught my eyes immediately. It is an announcement of the Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. for articles of the this year's Zedler Medal contest (on page 23). It is a really very nice designed announcement with the title "Donate your knowledge for Wikipedia". Well done again WMDE!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

I saw Mercury at Monday morning. This is the second time in my life that I saw this smallest planet of our solar system. Mercury is notorious for its difficulty to observe because of its vincinity to the Sun. It is said that Copernicus never saw this planet in his life.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

In German Wikipedia a controvers breaked out because of the license migration. A lot of authors felt themselve bad informed and are discussion about the possibility of author naming inside the articles. A poll is planned for between April 20th and Mai 4th.

Monday, April 13, 2009

All Wikipedians are called to a vote for changing of the license agreement from GFDL to double licensing under GFDL and CC-BY-SA.

The voting was made necessary mostly because GFDL doesn't scale well when it comes to publishing Wikipedia content in other forms like paper or DVD, which caused to legal uncertainties. The double licensing is negociated between the Wikimedia Foundation and FSF who holds the GFDL licensing right. It was a very difficult negociation that went two years. There were also a very long during discussion on mailing list and on the meta page about this license change, where different issues and positions were discussed in every detail.

Now we endly are moving on. I think this license change is very important because the current situation is hindering our effort of outreach.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Sue announced the Letter of Support yesterday. Volunteers of the Wikimedia movement can request Letter of Support from the Foundation if they need such support letters for their work in the community and public. This is a further step that the foundation is going to do, to actively support community members in their work.

This would not be the last step, and it is only a small step, but it shows the direction where we want to move to. And in my opinion it is absolutely the right thing to do and right direction to go.

Naturally there are a lot of things we can do. And we would not be able to do all these things and distribute the resources of the foundation in all directions equally. This is also the reason why the foundation would work on its strategy in the next time. To work out where we want to concentrate our energy in all those things what we want to do.

The work on this strategy would cost us resources and energy, but it is a thing that worth to do. It would give us a clear direction for the future years and we would be able to distribute our resources not aimlessly.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Today is the third and last day of the WMF Boardmeeting. The party in the evening before had the result that the people gathered later than planned. Quite some people left the location long after the midnight. I planned to leave at 22:00 but left far later.

The topic of today is mainly more elaborations about the strategic planning, develop a time plan, work out who would take part in which workgroup, etc.

At 11:00 we went up to join the chapters for the wrap up part. The developers presented their results. You see by the questions that the usability project get the most attention, followed by OpenMap collaboration. The end was so touching.

After lunch the board meeting went on. We had discussions about various topics and finished some of the loose ends of the meeting. At about 14:30 we were endly done.

I went to the WMDE office. It is in a beautiful restalled old building from the begin of the 20th century. There are more talks. Most of the people went after that to C-Base for party again. Elya, Raimond, Dror and I sat at a street corner near the WMDE office and talked about fund raising, tax deduction, history and people. It was really fun.

At 16:00 Dror started for C-Base, Elya and Raimond for the rail station. I went by foot to the rail station because I still have so much time. It took me a good hour of time to go. But it is good weather and most part of the way was Tiergarten and Spreeufer, so it was a beautiful walk.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Today was mostly dedicated to the issue of Biography of Living People (BLP): What's the problem, why the problem and what we as board and the foundation should do with this problem. This topic was discussed for quite long time because of its importancy, but also because it is not so easy as it may be seemed to be.

After that we built up different workshops to check different things. For example to work out a resolution about the BLP, or the trademark issue and some other topics.

At 17:00 we had a joint meeting with the attendees of the chapters meeting. That was a great meeting. Atop of Berlin we discussed about various topics such as strategic planning, relations between the foundation and the chapters, the relationship between the chapters, the diversity of culture and chapters and the respect of this diversity as a value of the Wikimedia movement, communication and transparency. It was such an exciting meeting. You can really feel the spirit in the air. I really love to see all those faces and eyes.

At the evening it was the party at C-Base, an amazing hacker bar in Kreuzberg, where we also meet the folks who took part to the developer meeting. It was a very nice party with lots of talks, games, hacking, photo sessions and nice food and drink. (Though I didn't try the CC-BY beer.) I planned to stay until 22:00 but stayed there far more later.

Friday, April 3, 2009

This year the board meeting is in Berlin, at the same place as the WMF Chapters meeting. At the same time there is also the developers meeting in Berlin in C-Base.

Unlike the earlier meetings we started at about 11:30, because before that we went up to the Chapters meeting to attend the opening event. I am so happy to meet so many old friends and to learn the new chapters. Many people I already knew from mailing lists or committees but met them for the first time.

After that it goes with the real board meetings. At Friday there are mostly short topics of administrative and procedural nature. So it went quite fast and we worked three or four topics inside of a few hours.

At the evening there was a reception of some of the board members of Quadriga Foundation. Last year Wikipedia won the Quadriga Prize. So they invited us for a reception. It was held in an appartment just above the Brandburg Gate, with the undergoing sun over Tiergarten. A sight that I didn't thought would have able to enjoy. There were a few members of the Quadriga. Most interesting talks are with the board member of Wikimedia Deutschland.

The day ends with the board dinner. Further informal talks about various things, for example problem of promotion in China.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Worked in Cologn in project from 7:00 until 16:00,went to railway station,traveled from Cologn to Berlin.Arrived Berlin at 22:20.Arrived hotel at about 22:30.Met other board member.Checked in,put down my gabbage.Went back to bar,talked with other attendants of the meeting.Now going to bed.At least I don't have jet lag this time